Brendan Kelly, L. Ac., M. Ac., acupuncturist and herbalist

Jade Mountain Wellness, Burlington, VT

Copyright by Brendan Kelly, 2012. All rights reserved.

Published online November 2012.

Around the country, there’s lots of talk about the cost of health care. Here in Vermont, where I live and practice Chinese medicine, the state is in the process of revamping the medical system partially for economic reasons. According to the Green Mountain Care Board, which was appointment by Governor Shumlin to oversee these changes, if the current increases in health care costs continue, it’s projected to bankrupt the state in 20 years. It’s not a question if the system will change, but rather a question of how and when.

While the finances of health care are somewhat different for other states here in New England and nationally, the trend is very clear—costs are increasing rapidly. While there’s lots of discussion about what this means for who receives health care and who pays for it, what’s lacking for the most part is an examination of the underlying causes. Historically, Chinese medicine has emphasized the importance in the treatment room of understanding symptoms and where they’re coming from. Treating symptoms alone without understanding their deeper causes is analogues to having your tomato plant wilting from a lack of moisture and not watering the roots. Even with the best of intentions, if the plant is dry and doesn’t get watered, pruning the dying leaves and stems will have little lasting benefit.

Similarly, it’s important to discuss the underlying reasons why our health care continues to become more and more expensive. A fundamental cause is that our health care system is none of these—it’s not a system and it doesn’t care for health. We have often confusing and sometimes contradictory reimbursement and treatment guidelines which overwhelming pay for the suppression of symptoms. Unfortunately modern western medicine, and the government agencies and insurance companies that pay for it, do not have a well-developed understanding of health and well-being, and as a result emphasize trying to make symptoms go away. But as with our tomato plants, what happens on the surface—physical, mental and emotional symptoms—is a reflection of what’s happening at deeper levels— a lack of internal balance and harmony.

With our health, symptoms often appear externally because something is out of balance internally. From several thousand years of clinical practice and refinement, Chinese medicine has developed deep-reaching diagnostic and treatment methods to address both the branch—the symptoms—as well as the deeper root causes. In addition to its very significant health benefits, Chinese medicine is also an extremely cost effective form of care.

In our clinic we routinely see patients able to reduce or eliminate many medications as well as avoid a wide range of surgeries. A few weeks ago, a patient told me that she cancelled the foot surgery scheduled before coming in for treatments. Interestingly, she was not coming in primarily for foot pain and I was not focusing treatments on the discomfort in her toes. The significant reduction in her pain and resulting cancelation of the surgery were an ancillary benefit to a treatment process that was promoting internal well-being. The cost saving from cancelling the surgery would, in all likelihood, have paid for several decades of regular Chinese medicine treatments.

A major part of the rapidly increasing costs of health care is that it’s expensive to wait until people are sick before they receive treatments. While preventing disease and the need for invasive treatments is preferable to focusing only on treating symptoms, there is even more benefit, medically and economically, to promoting health.

Bio: Brendan Kelly is an acupuncturist and herbalist at Jade Mountain Wellness in Burlington, VT—www.jademtwellness.com. He researches, writes and teaches about natural medicine at colleges, universities, schools and conferences nationwide. He is currently in the processing of publishing his first book “The Yin and Yang of Climate Change.”

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Abstract

A fundamental tenet of Chinese medicine is that as humans we are connected to the world around us, and that the microcosm and the macrocosm – the little picture and the big picture – offer similar views, with the difference being merely a matter of scale. In light of over two decades of voluminous Western research indicating that the stability of the climate has been seriously compromised, how can Chinese medicine contribute to the ongoing discussion about climate change? Even a basic discussion of yinyang theory can provide significant insights into what climatologists describe is happening globally. This article examines prevalent assumptions about climate change held in the industrialized West through the lens of Chinese medicine, and explores deep-reaching philosophical understandings from classic Chinese medical texts that have much to offer in discussions about – and action towards – climate stabilisation.

To read the full article, click here.

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Despite the great emotions being expressed about health care reform in this country, the scope of change that is predominantly being discussed is actually quite small. While there are some exceptions, the most publicized part of the debate is who should have access to western health care, and who should pay for it. What has been very sporadically discussed, and in my mind only in a very superficial way, is the much bigger and more important question: What is health and how do we promote it?

Part of the difficulty of answering this question from the view of modern western medicine is that almost all of the current focus is on treating sickness. Yes, there is occasional talk about preventative medicine, but this is in very general terms, often about how exercise and diet are important parts of a healthy lifestyle. And they unquestionably are important, but without having a deeper, more nuanced, and more person-specific understanding of wellbeing, it is unlikely these ideas will have a significant impact on lasting health in this country.

Over many thousands of years of continuous refinement, Chinese medicine has developed a genuinely holistic and comprehensive system that is capable of treating a very wide variety of physical and psychological issues. Just as importantly, Chinese medicine also has a very well developed and broad reaching understanding of wellness, one in which exercise and diet are only two parts of a much larger picture.

Lasting health, from this view, comes from balance, where we have not too much or too little of the factors that sustain our lives. While this might sound like a vague and nebulous idea, it is very possible to understand specifically the presence or absence of wellbeing through traditional Chinese medical methods (pulse and tongue diagnosis for example). Simply because there are no physical symptoms, or that they are considered sub-clinical from the western view, does not necessarily mean that a person is healthy. Put another way, the absence of symptoms does not necessarily mean the presence of wellbeing.

For many practical reasons, it makes sense to promote health rather than wait for sickness to occur. One reason for this is economic; it often takes much less time and effort, and therefore costs much less, to treat a sickness at the very beginning of onset. Better yet, treat the disease before it is a disease, thereby reducing costs even more, while simultaneously limiting pain and discomfort.

While our bodies are infinitely more complex than any machine, waiting to get sick before we go to our practitioner to get treatments it analogous to waiting for our car to breakdown before taking it in for service. If we are sick or our car is broken, hopefully there is something helpful that can be done, but doesn’t it make sense to keep things well tuned (as in the case of a car) and promote health (as in the case of our bodies and minds?)

Chinese medicine is uniquely capable of providing very affordable, comprehensive healthcare, which can not only treat what ails us, but also potentially help us experience lasting wellbeing. Hopefully, our current discussions of healthcare reform will provide opportunities to look below the surface of the debate about who gets treated and who pays for it, to what is health and how do we promote it.

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copyright 2011, Brendan Kelly

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For millennia, Chinese culture has observed Nature and sought to understand the  changes in the world around us, as well as within us. One of the primary models that was developed to understand these cycles is the Five Elements, with Wood representing Spring, Fire representing Summer, Earth representing late Summer, Metal representing Fall, and Water representing Winter.

It appears that the first well-developed written source  about the Five Elements dates back about 4800 years, and  describes them as phases of movement of energy within us and all of creation. As one of the seminal classical Chinese medicine texts, the Nei Jing or Yellow Emporer’s Classic of Internal Medicine is a detailed description of Chinese cosmology and human health, and comes from cultural and medical understandings that far predates its publication. Some estimates are that our current Five Element model draws on 10,000-12,000 years of continuous development.

From these thousands of years of refinement there are associations that are not only the basis of Five Element acupuncture and herbal medicine, but part of a medical system that offers important lessons on how to live a more balanced life. With the cold temperature and the predominance of darkness, we are now in Winter, which is associated with the Water element. To understand the season and the element itself, think about water as it appears in Nature.

Think of the ocean: deep, dark, and when viewed from the shore, it can seem to continue out onto the horizon forever. Also, think about when the waves are high and pounding the coast. The force with which they hit the beach can literally cause the ground to shake. The Water element is an embodiment of this vastness and tremendous power. My experiences from being thrown by waves while surfing during storms has shown me how small we are physically in relation to the forces of Water. And as with all the elements, we have this same power within us.

For us humans, this power of the Water element is housed in the Kidneys. Seated in our lower back, they provide a foundation on which our physical, emotional and spiritual strength rests. However, rather than being a deep reserve of fluids and power, the Kidneys can become dried out and depleted due to the way we live. Sometimes we even equate the hectic pace of our schedules with living a meaningful life. We sometimes consciously and unconsciously think “I’m busy all the time doing things, therefore my life means something.” Unfortunately, not only does “doing” not necessarily equal “meaning”, there can be an inverse relationship between the two: doing more can create less meaning. This is particularly true when our “doing” wears us down, making us less capable of living fully and appreciating life deeply.

One central aspect of health in Chinese medicine, which is particularly relevant at this time of the year, is rest. We as a culture can get caught up in “doing” to the extent that it can literally become pathological. Our sometimes excessively active lives can compromise the strength of our own internal foundation. When we regularly push beyond our daily allotment of energy, we will eventually begin to dip into our deep reserves, called jing, which are housed in the Kidney. It is traditionally understood that these energetic resources are better used to help us fulfill our unique individual purpose in life or help us in times of potentially life threatening illness

This concentrated jing energy is also our source of deep internal wisdom. It is our ability to see our lives through the perspective of the passage of time and the process of growing older. It is both our ability to sense clearly the unique purpose of our lives, as well as the long-term energy to fulfill that purpose. With the magnitude of its importance, it’s clear why Chinese medicine places such an emphasis on protecting our jing and not squandering it carelessly.

Also  called Ancestral Energy or Ancestral Qi, jing is understood to be passed along to us from our parents at conception. In a general physical sense, it can be seen as a very rough equivalent to our current understanding of DNA. A very important part of appreciating the significance of our jing is that once we have used them up, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to replace. And when it is used up, our life is over. With this traditional understanding in mind, the phrase “working ourselves to death” can take on real meaning.

Often related to being overly busy is our use of stimulants. What stimulants offer in the short term is the perception of having the energy to do things and stay awake. In continuing to work or be active after we are tired, we can dip into our jing to keep going because we don’t have the day-to-day energy to continue with the physical work or mental activity with which we are engaged. Over the long term, this not surprisingly leaves us in an even more depleted state.

Coffee in particular introduces the pathological influence of damp heat into the Kidneys and the lower part of our body in general. The stimulating aspects of coffee is part of the heat, and the oils in the coffee are part of the dampness. To understand damp heat, think about an infection that has reached the oozing, red, festering, inflamed stage. The redness and inflammation are the heat, and the oozing and festering is the dampness. Together, they combine to create an unhealthy, potentially serious condition. What coffee does is introduce (to various degrees) this very same condition to our Kidneys, which again is a foundation of our strength.  By drinking coffee regularly (both with and without caffeine), we introduce this damp heat pathology into our own base of energy.

In looking to the local, wild plants as potential teachers, they have much to offer us in terms of living a balanced life more in harmony with Nature and the seasons. Look outside your window, or think about a natural area you know well. Are the plants there sending up new shoots now?  Are they in a flowering stage, reaching up towards the sunlight? Is there an abundance of fruit or vegetables on their stems or branches, ready for harvest? The answer to all of these questions is, of course, no. The plants are in dormancy, with most of their energy stored underground in their roots. Similarly, Chinese medicine prescribes that we limit our physical and mental work, and general activity, this season so that our own essence can be stored and replenished. As with our plant friends, when we rest and sleep more in Winter, our reserves can build so that when the warmth and sunshine of Spring returns we can shoot forth into the season with the energy for new growth and activity.

Each  season offers us unique opportunities. With Winter, it is the chance to replenish our root strength, just as the plants and trees and animals around us are doing. By slowing down, being still, and observing the world around us, we can learn to go more and more with the flow of Nature. That flow for us now in Vermont is a cold and dark one. It is a flow that moves slowly, that conserves energy by not doing more than what is needed. It is a flow, when listened to, that can help us build deep strength so that with the return of Spring we too can experience the resurrection of that season.

Some signs and symptoms commonly associated with Water imbalances:

• temperature regulation issues, particularly hot flashes and night sweats
• back (particularly lower back) and leg issues (in the hips, knees, ankles and feet), including weakness, stiffness, tendency towards injury and pain
• general fatigue and loss of energy
• graying and loss of head hair
• sleep issues, including difficulty falling and staying asleep and not sleeping deeply

Some suggestions on how to live more in balance with Winter:

•  work and do less, and rest more. Sleeping 1-3 hours more nightly now helps build endurance for the remainder of the year.

•  consider eliminating, or at least limiting significantly, stimulants, especially all coffee (including de-caf.)

• eat warm, cooked, nourishing foods, like soups and stews from locally and organically grown  and vegetables, as well as natural and organically raised meat and wild game. Red meat helps build blood and lasting strength, as do root vegetables.  Eating blue and black foods usually strengthens the Kidney, including blueberries, black beans, black sesame seeds etc.

• consider incorporating wild food into your diet. Burdock root, also known as Japanese gobo root, is nutrition packed and helps build strength in the Kidney, and is a common plant throughout Vermont and can easily be incorporated into soups and stews.

• visit natural and wild places, and observe what is happening and not happening, and follow Nature’s lead.

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This article was first published in the Winter, 2008 edition of Tributary Magazine, a southeast Montana regional publication. It has been updated and applied to life here in Vermont.

copyright 2012.

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Jade Mountain Wellness provides individualized natural health care for the whole family, from toddlers to seniors, including acupuncture, non-needle treatments, and customized western and Chinese herbal formulas to address a wide variety of physical and emotional symptoms, prevent their re-occurrence, and promote long-lasting health. We are committed to the well-being of our patients, our community and the environment. We offer classes about western herbs, Tai Chi Ch’uan and Qi Gong, Chinese medicine and healthy living. We are committed to deepening our understanding of Chinese medicine and acupuncture through several hundred hours of advanced post-graduate training each year.

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Acupuncture Degrees and Certifications, Licensed in Vermont and Montana.

Meet Our Acupuncturists 

Liz Geran and Brendan Kelly both have Master’s Degrees in acupuncture from the Academy for Five Element Acupuncture (AFEA), and in 2005 began regular study of Classical Chinese Medicine with Jeffrey C. Yuen, 88^th generation Daoist priest.

They have advanced, post-graduate training in OB/GYN and reproductive issues, the endocrine system (hormones), luo vessels, eight extra meridians, oncology (cancer treatment), and treating psycho-emotional issues. They have also partially completed  a two year advanced, in-depth study of Chinese herbal medicine with 300 classroom hours.

Liz and Brendan are certified nationally through the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM) and licensed in Vermont and Montana. Learn more…

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Burlington, Vermont Acupuncture Clinic

Hours

Jade Mountain Wellness  is open from 9:30am to 7:30pm  Monday-Friday.

Location

We are located in the Chase Mill, upstairs on the third floor, suite 305. The address is 1 Mill St. Burlington, Vermont. (Get Directions)

This is an ADA building and is wheelchair accessible.

Contact Us Here

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